Transaction fees are a feature, not a bug. They are there for a reason, not just a necessity we could go around. They are there to stop the transaction spam, if there were no fees in the first place, Bitcoin would be an easy target for the DoS attack that could be stopped. Bitcoin would be dead in seconds. Don't fix what ain't broken, my friend.

It isn't the same if you send to any of these addresses, on a technical level, that is all different. You won't be able to make a segwit transaction from a standard Bitcoin address, that is all you need to know for now. If you want to make a segwit tx in the future, you will need to send coins to the segwit address first (the one that starts with 3). Only when you send coins from a segwit address to a segwit address, that transaction is a segwit transaction and it will be smaller then a standard Bitcoin transaction.

You should find a transaction id for that unconfirmed transaction. You can look up your address that you sent the coins to or from in some block explorer like this one https://blockexplorer.com/ (you might want to use Tor borwser for anonymity) or you might want to try to look it up in Electrum, if it offers such feature.

Getting txid will allow you to look up more details about that transaction, like the exact fee it was used, you can see more info about the transaction by putting txid in a block explorer. You can post the fee here or even txid if you don't mind the privacy complications of reveling your address publicly.
You can look up the appropriate fees on bitcoinfees.21.co or just ask here for that fee and someone will approximate the confirmation time for you.

Don't worry even if you lost access to that old wallet as long as you have the address that the coins were sent to (the Electrum one).
You can always use CPFP method to get that transaction confirmed quickly, whenever you want.

You can also use a decentralized exchange like Bisq (former Bitsquare). It is more secure and private then other exchanges and of course there are no limits, since it is decentralized so there is no hard process in creating a new account, just like in Bitcoin. There are safety limits per trade, but they are quite high and are rarely reached by traders. You can always run multiple trades at the same time as well of course.

This will happen again, it keeps happening many times in Ethereum over and over again. The forked when the DAO was hacked, they might do it again in the future. Ethereum is a platform where people rush to make a development, this goes both for Ethereum core developers that develop the blockchain itself and smart contract developers that develop dapps. They don't test that much and are mostly just concerned with possible new fancy features they might add, there is weak security and stability in the whole system. It shows that Bitcoin never had a hardfork that took the majority of users even tho it is there for longer, it never had a common vulnerability in multisig transaction scripts like Ethereum. Bitcoin is more carefully developed so there is no need to worry about that at least. As for Ethereum, I tried to use it years ago and my node could sync up while I synced up Bitcoin Core multiple times, the code for Ethereum is very buggy.

Because changing anything in life takes effort, including the blockchain you are using. Unless there are clear benefits, Bitcoin users will not leave Bitcoin. If they switched for every fork, there would be no purpose of Bitcoin. Users don't want to change their clients from the ones that are most secure,stable and most reviewed, so they stick to Bitcoin Core. Meanwhile Bitcoin Core developers do whatever is possible to avoid hardfork changes, they prefer softforks for stability,security and backward compatibility reasons. It is hard to change what is already established, this is natural way of preserving stability and security in a system, but with big enough benefits Bitcoin could fork, there is just no good reason for that now nor can we see one with certainty for the future.

You really shouldn't type your private key anywhere online, as you are practically giving the website your bitcoins. Instead download Bitcoin Core, you don't have to wait for it to sync up, just go to Help->Debug window->Console and type the that should add the standard Bitcoin address corresponding to that private key to the wallet, then put that address in the following command . The result of that command will be your segwit address.

You can always exchange your bitcoins to some anonymous altcoin like Monero using any of the many decentralized crypto<->crypto exchanges (will work even better with Atomic swaps), then make a Monero private transaction and then exchange it back. It really isn't hard to stay anonymous or launder your coins once you are already in crypto and, as I mentioned before, with Bisq you can even get even get more coins with fiat anonymously and securely. The point is that not only would removing anonymity from crypto be bad for society, but it is also impossible. All that governments can do is the same they been doing with fiat for decades, witch is to keep the small fish (which make the economic minority) out of the game, not the big guys. Bitcoin tech is just allowing the small fish to be as anonymous as big fish if they know what they are doing. It was simply created to give power to the people and it does that pretty well.

It can't half forever since you can't half a single satoshi. The rewards will stop, this is intended by design. Just try halving the current block reward and in about 30-something halves (you will have to remove the digits below one satoshi to be accurate). Since halving is every 4 years, you get a number somewhat over 100 years, but it is there.

You sound a bit too afraid of life my friend. You can't have freedom and someone to fully protect you and watch over you all the time.
Be brave and rational. not paranoid.

If you do give government full capability of tracking every transaction then they will use it for corruption, political imprisonment, personal benefits and they will get hacked and eventually all the information will leak. Giving power to the ones who consistently prove that they can not be trusted with it is absolute madness created by fears that are even more insane. You should be careful, not paranoid.

Democracy and anonymity go together. You can not have full democracy without full anonymity.

1. It might not fit some technical definition of an exchange, but maybe Bitcoin doesn't fit some technical definition of a currency. What is a technical definition tho, doesn't matter. Bisq is practically an exchange, as you can use that program to exchange currency. Localbitcoins is centralized, Bisq is not. Website is only thing you could shut down in Bisq, just like government could shutdown Bitcoin.org, but not the transactions themselves. Bisq doesn't have cash trades, it uses various bank transfers as payment methods between peers, but no single party knows all the bank transfers connected to Bisq, this information is encrypted between traders and the whole network exists only on the Tor network. Bisq was created to be censorship resistant, it is decentralized by design, there is no single point of failure. You would have to take every Bisq offer to reveal all the users, which would cost a lot of money, as there are security deposits, Bitcoin mining fees, antispam trading fees etc. This is all assuming that Bisq traders actually want to trade with you, instead of someone they traded with before.
It is good to be always sceptical, but I think you would understand more if you read more about it. It is a pretty good decentralized system.
2. Correct. Bank fraud is not a crime in my book, banks are a fraud. Cyberbullying is not a crime, just close the tab. You really think that it should be illegal for one person to hurt other with words? Does that call for actual physical intervention by law? Online predators are criminals when they do actual physical crime, whether they talk to vulnerable people online or not, even tho it is disgusting, it should be punished physically by law. You can expose them, warn others about them, forbid the use of Internet or teach vulnerable about the dangers, but not get rid of people who talk to other people on the Internet, no matter what they say. Child pornography should be a crime when it is filmed, as children are too young to make such decisions in life and especially if they are forced. Actually watching it shouldn't. Are you going to arrest anyone who sees something you might consider disgusting to watch or are you just paranoid that every action that reminds you of a crime should be punished?

They would get disconnected because most nodes are Bitcoin Core nodes and as far as I know Bitcoin Core nodes will disconnect from the S2X nodes.
They just don't want to their client to have very few connections (some might possibly have trouble connecting at all), so for the purpose of their client running just as well as Bitcoin Core until the fork, they did this so that Core nodes won't discriminate against them. However, this would pose bigger problems during the fork as these clients will get disconnected from Core nodes anyway as they follow a different blockchain and basically a different network. S2X devs might not care so much for that as they maybe just hope that they will convince Core users to switch by then or it might be financial reasons as the slower client with fewer connections might discourage S2X supporters to keep supporting them.

Well it is not a tool, it wasn't intended to be 'used' for something. It just happens. Someone wanted to go their own way, so they did.
You can join them, you can ignore them, you can protest them, you can buy their their coins if you think they will increase in value or be useful to you, you can sell the coins you got by them copying the ledger if you think their coin will decrease in value or is useless to you.
Fork is an event, you can plan accordingly.

He can use Tor browser to visit a website. But in Tails OS everything is routed through Tor, it is the best OS for anonymity, that is why I recommended it in the first comment. It comes with Electrum, so any transaction will be broadcasted to Tor hiddden service nodes and no traffic will ever touch the clearnet. He will be as anonymous as a person can be, which is pretty good.

I agree that there are apps only available for Windows obviously, but you do have the alternatives for the most popular ones. There is a huge range of open source programs, it is hard to find things that you don't have an open source program for it. An average user wouldn't have that much trouble switching to Linux and would experience giant safety, privacy and stability improvements. VMs are resource intensive, but again, depends on what you are using it for. I do understand why people that use specific resource intensive tasks on Windows don't switch, but for most of the users, not really a big deal, but a benefit for the society would be huge. It is just marketing that is really keeping users away. After all, there would be a lot more open source programs as well if people used Linux, it is just that it is hard to take over the monopoly, but it is mostly just head games for the most users.

I am not sure what you are talking about compiling apps. My point is that not only are there many alternatives for Windows programs, but there are no GUI problems either, as Windows will implement most of these changes that popular Linux GUIs have anyway, it is just that here you will have the benefits of them first.

Of course that there are many vulnerabilities in open source software, I see many Linux ones, even OpenBSD ones popping up. This is very apparent with the rise of Android, as it is based on Linux and most users are becoming Android users, even taking away from Windows. I wouldn't be surprised that Android has more users then Windows (after all, who doesn't have a smart phone these days) and still it has far less vulnerabilities, even tho it is a lot more interesting for a hacker to have your smart phone then your PC, as it is more used by you then an other device. However, Android is based on Linux and there is no doubt that open source programs, especially Linux, is far more secure then closed source ones. In theory and now with the many years of Android era, in practice as well. Most vulnerabilities in Android end up being in closed sourced apps.

I don't blame Microsoft for anything. I think Bill Gates is dope. I see their place in this industry dieing, it was a good run tho. However, the fact is that the idea is simply bad, the closed sourced OS idea, at least it is for today's standards. It is always users faults, you can't blame even the governments for anything, it is the people that are always the problem, as a whole. Few bad apples can't do much damage, it is the vast majority that is held accountable for everything.

Sure, the patch came out pretty fast, but they are selling two contradictory things with their OS. You can't have both security and the ability to never do anything with your system. The point is that if you want security, Linux is a better option then doing patching your Windows and if you do patch your Windows, then you are having a similar amount of inconvenience as just switching to Linux. It really takes a short time to be adjusted to Linux and you only have to do it once, then you are set for life.

I am obviously not payed by Linux or nothing I can't be, it is an open source project. I can't be closed minded about it as I have used Windows for decades like everybody else that uses Linux. I simply made a switch and it really is a lot better, it is simply the truth. I can't imagine leaving Linux anymore, it is so much better, Windows doesn't even seem like an OS to me anymore. It really doesn't. You have no control over it, you can't do nothing with it. It is like using an online wallet in Bitcoin for me, it is simply not a wallet anymore.

1. I did, the only one that I know that is decentralized and uses fiat<->crypto. Bisq (former Bitsquare). Just read the first sentence again more carefully
2. According to me, you haven't. If I had a bank and you did that, I would still not call it a crime. I considered thefts of bitcoins just as well and private information and data, like pictures and other hacks and ransomware. I have been thinking about it for a long time and I think that we shouldn't consider any non-physical act as a crime. At least not in the physical world, now will there be punishment for your cyberactions in the cyberspace, like government hacking you back or stealing your money, is a different story in my opinion and those two should be strictly held separate.

I see a lot of hostile comments on that commit, that I do not support. Especially when people get law involved into this.
It is their right to do this and is in no way a trojan or any kind of vulnerability. They are just doing what they think is best for their network and Bitcoin network will easily overcome any small interruptions caused by this. We should all chill out a little bit.
However, this is not a smart move on their part and it will hurt their network, but whatever, it is their choice.

It worries me when I see people getting so easily scared about Bitcoin. You are safe, it would be easier to stop Internet then Bitcoin.
It worries me because fear is exactly what people use to get more power then they should have, this is what all the regimes do.
Not that this is a treat right now, but it very well could be in the future. Be confident, don't panic so easily.

Since Bitcoin works by keeping a ledger (records of who owns how much money), a fork is simply a copy of the ledger.
They will copy the old Bitcoin ledger (blockchain) and use it independently so that two ledgers become more and more different over time.
Think of it as some bank coming to the bank you are using, copying your balance and offering the withdrawal of it in their own bank, except that the money you withdraw at this new bank is different money, different currency and does not hold the same value.
This is an easy way of getting customers for your new bank.

If you want to learn more about it in a technical sense, you will need to read about blockchain technology.

Wallet.dat file is all you need. It has private keys written in it. Seed is just a blueprint for a computer to make the same wallet.dat file.
If your wallet.dat file is encrypted, as it definitely should, then you will need a password as well to decrypt it in the future.
Technically all you need to spend bitcoins is a private key, that is why you need to hide it as well.

PS: Understand that you are doing very different things with your ETH and BTC. You are not a sole owner (if you are owner at all) of your ETH, but here you will be the only one that can use that BTC. That is why you need to download a client like Electrum or Bitcoin Core, since it is all you. I suggest you get private keys from your ETH as well and keep them a secret from other sites as well.

That is a bad sign. You might not have something setup properly. There is a bit of a privacy risk to using your Bitcoin node with and without Tor at the same time, but not really very worrying, but still.
I don't know how you setup your Tor node, but check bitcoin.conf in your data directory.
I set it up by installing tor and creating a hidden service in the torrc file. Then I run Bitcoin Core with bitcoin.conf looking something like this:


This makes routes all the traffic through Tor and the node is only accessible with the hidden service. You can alternatively bind it to a external ip and therefor allow IP connections, but as I said, might be a privacy concern.